Chinese Meteorite Fraud on eBay - Federal Mail Fraud Charges??

Looking the mailing instructions, the person or persons areusing the US mail to send their "merchandise" to the auctionwinners. It seems like the use of the US mail would make them open to federal mail fraud charges if one of the winnersor someone else complained to the United States Postal Service.

"Upon photo analysis geologists believe that the stone eggs are rare, large concretions of the carbonate rock. They were formed, starting from a tiny nucleus in the center, snowballing slowly in the oscillating sea water."

In this sentence, the reporter has very likely either mistranslated what the geologists told him or her or is indulging in some poetic license in writing his his story. No geologist, whom I know, would argue that these concretions formed like snowballs. Instead, these concretions, like many other cannonball concretions, started growing within sediment underlying the bottom of a sea or ocean only after it had accumulated. In the pictures accompanying the articles, the original layering of the strata, in which the concretion grew, can be seen as concentric rings around one of these concretions.

Looking at the lowermost figure in the Chinese article, I have to wonder, being unable to read Chinese, if the author of the Chinese article is confusing them with the man made stone balls in Costa Rica. (A translation of this article would be greatly appreciated.)

Iron Sulfide Concretions Selling for 6.08 Dollars a Gram (eBay)

If a person wants to see an example of geological illiteracy, which is on par with the worst of the meteorwrongs, which have appeared on Ebay, they can go to the "Awesome Boji(r) Stones! Balance/Align Chakras!", Item number: 130101485377, at;

The eBay web page, along with the usual pseudo-scientific, mumble jumble about healing properties normally associated with these objectsdoes correctly identify the "Boji(r) Stones, also known as Kansas Pop Rocks" as being concretions. However, it incorrectly states among many other claims, that these iron-sulfide concretions are composed of "iron-magnetite".

Despite the fact that the items, which are being auctioned are nothing more than ordinary iron-sulfide concretions, of which thousands can be found eroding out of the Smoky Hill Member of Niobrara Formation, the bidding as of 7:45 Eastern Standard Time had reached 152.50 dollars. Given that stated weight of each concretion is 12.5 and 12.6 grams, for a total weight of 25.1 grams, the dollar per gram cost comes to 6.08 dollars per gram.

It shows a significant degree of geologic illiteracy that some people are willing pay for ordinary iron-sulfide concretions, which completely lack any scientifically documented healing properties as argued for by personal religious beliefs and erode out of Kansas chalk by the thousand, as much per gram as some meteorites. Looking at web pages like this, it should not be surprising that meteorwrongs arealso a standard part of eBay sales.

It seems like anybody looking for meteorites in Kansas could make some money by leasing their own outcrop of the Smoky Hill Member of Niobrara Formation to mine iron sulfide concretionsfrom and selling them under their own trademarked name with similar claims for them having healing powers. It seems like iron sulfide concretions from any formation could be marketedwith the right trademarked name and suitable mumble jumble about them having healing powers; being useful for aligning a person metaphysically; balancing a person's energy field; and relieving their pain and there would be no shortage of people willing pay several dollars per gram to purchase them. Given thistype of scientific illiteracy, which pervades it, eBay would one of many places a person could sell them with great success.

They found a single, about 2-cm thick, layer ofspherules, which is interpreted to a primary air-fall deposit. They found no other spherule layers in the multiple cores of the K-T boundary section, which were recovered.

They concluded:

"Sedimentological, geochemical, and paleontological changes across the boundary closely match patterns expected for a mass extinction caused by a single impact."

Dare to Add venture Fur Ther???

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